Testimony of Healing January 11, 1947 Issue

A recent conversation with a...

Igor I. Geffen

A recent conversation with a Christian Scientist brought out the fact that support of our periodicals includes writing testimonies and articles. When I considered that I have been a student of Christian Science for about twenty years, and have received help many times from reading the testimonies and articles in our literature, I saw that I had failed, by withholding expression of my appreciation, to pay a proper debt of gratitude to God.

I cannot begin to enumerate all the healings and blessings it has been my privilege to experience. A few healings, however, stand out as beacon lights. On a New Year's Eve over nineteen years ago, my wife and I stepped out of the house of the friends we had been visiting to find that the temperature had dropped exceedingly. As we walked I felt a click in one of my ears. I stopped and asked my wife if she knew what frostbite was, and at that moment I felt a similar click in my other ear. My wife looked at me and exclaimed, "Your ears are frozen." Immediately I mentally denied the testimony of the material senses and affirmed man's likeness to Spirit, God. We walked to a near-by hotel and took a cab home. I was scheduled to give a musical program at three o'clock the following afternoon. At nine in the morning both ears had become distended and swollen. I called a Christian Science practitioner, and she assured me that I would be in my right place that afternoon. By two-thirty the ears had become normal in shape, all discomfort had ceased, and the healing was complete. I gave my program as planned.

Recently, when the pilot light of our gas water heater went out, I tried to relight it. There was an explosion, and tongues of flame shooting out burned my hand. The sense of pain was extreme. I went to the telephone to call for help, but was unable to reach a practitioner. Then the thought came to me, This is an opportunity to prove what you profess, the truth of Christian Science. I had my wife read aloud the current week's Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly. Then I worked with the ninety-first Psalm, and with the paragraph from Science and Health on page 495 beginning: "When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea." Later the children came in and sang Mrs. Eddy's hymns. I joined with them, and as we sang the hymn beginning, "O gentle presence, peace and joy and power" (Poems, p. 4), I suddenly had a clear understanding of the nothingness of the lying senses. I experienced healing and the "peace ... which passeth all understanding." From that moment there was no more pain, and in a few days new flesh, scarless, formed where the burns had been.